A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain [little readers .TXT] 📗

“A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can prove four generations of noble descent?”

“Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that qualification.”

“Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing.  What good is such a qualification as that?”

“What good?  It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself.”

“As how?”

“For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding saints.  By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations.”

“I see, I see—it is the same thing.  It is wonderful.  In the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations—mummified in ignorance and sloth—and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp.  Does the king’s grace approve of this strange law?”

The king said:

“Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange.  All places of honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so without this or any rule.  The rule is but to mark a limit.  Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them.  I were to blame an I permitted this calamity.  You can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to any.”

“I yield.  Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald’s College.”

The chairman resumed as follows:

“By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British nobility?”

“He built a brewery.”

“Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision after due examination of his competitor.”

The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility himself.  So there was a tie in military qualifications that far.

He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:

“Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?”

“She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land.”

“That will do.  Stand down.”  He called up the competing lordling again, and asked:  "What was the rank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your great house?”

“She was a king’s leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born.”

“Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect intermixture.  The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord.  Hold it not in contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine.”

I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation.  I had promised myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome!

I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face.  I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn’t the end.

I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn’t have done a wiser thing.  It would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied regiment, the King’s Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent. This would make that regiment the heart’s desire of all the nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy.  Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper—nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency—and we would make this regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the King’s Own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at